It was another four months before the first letter finally arrived. Mary was overjoyed when she opened the mailbox and the letter on top was addressed from ‘Pte. N. Carter. US Army, 1st Infantry, 4th Brigade.’
She had learned just after Nick had left that the unit he was assigned to was not only prestigious but also know for seeing more combat than any other unit. During the great war of 1914 the first infantry was at the front of every big invasion and now was no different. Mary had taken to going to the cinema every Friday to watch the news from Europe, Africa, and Asia and silently hoped to see footage of Nick on the screen. She hadn’t yet but had found out that the First had lead the invasion into Northern Africa, only sustaining a small amount of causalities which was far too many for Mary’s nerves. The letter was reassuring that Nick had made it through the initial landing, but the slow mail made her worry that while she was reading his letter something bad may have already happened. Pushing her worries aside, she hurried back inside to read the letter.
She had expected it to be longer, and she had also not been prepared for it to be censored. Obviously, the Army did not want people back home to know any particulars. Places, names, and anything they’d done had been blacked out of the letter. All she really learned from the page long note was that Nick had made it to Africa, it was very hot despite being winter, and he’d gotten sick on the boat ride over there. He was also allowed to say that he loved her and looked forward to hearing from her.
She got a shoebox out of the closet and put the letter inside, before heading to her writing table to start work on her return correspondence. She had a lot to tell him; in the past few months’ things had definitely changed. Sheila wasn’t doing well, so Mary had cunningly convinced Jonathon to put her in a nursing home. He couldn’t expect her, his adulterous teenaged wife, to possibly be able to take proper care of his sick mother. She was also quick to point out that having a live-in caregiver was far more expensive than the home. She was amazed when her plan worked and Jonathon announced that he thought it was better for his mother to have ‘round the clock care. Mary didn’t care that he’d taken the credit for the idea; she knew she’d won.
Without Sheila around putting her nose in where it didn’t belong, Mary was essentially free. She was excited to let Nick know about what had happened, but purposely left out her plans for the future. She didn’t want to get ahead of herself, and just wanted to let things progress naturally. She had recently inherited some money from the death of her grandmother and had hid that money away in a bank account she’d opened for herself. She was putting plans in motion to slowly gain independence. Mary just needed the perfect moment to completely break free. She knew there was no way she could continue living the way she always had. She didn’t care though, the money meant nothing to her; class and status meant even less.
By the end of an hour her letter was pushing five pages, so she wrapped it up with a goodbye. After addressing and sealing the envelope, Mary threw a stamp on it when went back down to the box to throw it in the mail. She couldn’t wait to hear from him again.
~*~
Halfway around the world Nick was wondering if Mary had received his second letter yet. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said it was hot. Tunisia was the strangest place he’d ever heard about, let alone been to. During the days it was sweltering only to be freezing at night. The Army didn’t have uniforms for desert warfare of this style so they’d been at a disadvantage but had done all right for themselves so far. At home, what seemed like years ago, Nick had thought that he had it as good as it would get. Here though, he was part of a huge family, and was important to everyone. When he was a child he’d always wanted a brother and now he had 40 in his battalion alone. Each one of them had a talent that the others respected and encouraged. One was an excellent marksman, another good with explosives, one could cook things out of rations that actually tasted like food meant for humans, there was a singer, a poet, a counsellor, a translator for French, German and British (since they obviously seemed to be speaking a different language), one of Nick’s best pals was the local comedian; he could make any of them laugh even in the worst of situations, and Nick? He thought long and hard about what he could provide them before coming up with only one answer.
“Well, I can sew,” he offered and was immediately taken up on it.
It became known that if you had a hole in anything, whether it’s your sock or your tunic that Nick was the man to see. Every battalion in the Big Red One knew he was good with a needle and thread. Rumour had it that Nick would even give their mothers a run for their money. As a joke he had even sewed their names onto their extra socks and they used them as stockings on Christmas.
The only setback for Nick as company tailor was finding materials to work with. The other guys had no problem giving him their mending kids so he had lots of thread, needles, and buttons but what he really needed was fabric. Fresh socks, pants and tunics were not easy to come by so Nick had turned to his last resort. He introduced himself and his purpose to the officers at the field hospital and with their permission acquired material from the soldiers who needed it the least – the ones in the morgue. Sometimes the clothes would be too damaged, too bloody, too burned to use but Nick tried to make the best out of everything he could get.
There was one day in the spring though, that it all became too much. He’d gotten letters from home (another letter from Mary to reply to, and one from his father as well), feeling particularly homesick as he normally did on mail days. Down at the morgue, sorting through uniforms is when he finally lost control. He held a jacket to his chest as he cried, wondering if this guy’s life was really worth less than his and why he’d died before him. He ran his fingers over the embroidered name on the left breast – Littrell. He wondered where this Private Littrell lived, whether his family knew he was dead, and he secretly felt jealous that this fellow got to go home before him, even if it was in a box. All he wanted was to go home, see his father, see Mary and work at the market again. Heck, he’d even work for his father again.
As he walked back to camp with his newly acquired material, and puffy, just-cried eyes there was only one thing running through his mind – he loved his new friends, his new brothers, more than anything and wished that they had only met under different circumstances because right now, he wanted to go home. When he got back through, everyone was called into the commanding officer’s tent and his words further shattered their spirits.
“Well boys,” Colonel Riley grinned, rubbing his hands together, “We’re going to Italy!”
Italy was definitely not home.
